Conference thank you

Jan 24, 2007

Feedback forms for Saturday’s NC Science Blogging Conference are starting to come in, and they’re uniformly full of praise for how well organized the event was (regardless of the coffee snafu). The feedback also includes some great ideas for improving the conference for next year.

I’m proud of what we accomplished at the conference — this event truly exemplified the BlogTogether goal of bringing people face-to-face with each other to share their experiences and insights about using weblogs. So let me publicly praise all the individuals and organizations that came to together to make this a successfull event:

Bora Zivkovic was the inspiration for the conference (as he recounts here), and his prolific blogging and linking helped us blanket the blogosphere with news about the conference. Brian Russell lent his considerable IT and conference organization experiences (he did PodcasterCon last year) — he repeatedly warned me about the need to make the wifi sign-up process as crystal clear as possible; that’s one detail I let slip too long. Paul Jones backstopped us all the way, and knew just the levers to pull for reserving the hall, the tables, the trashcans and quite a few other important details. Bora, Brian and Paul are perfect teammates.

Rob Gluck, Elizabeth Borkowski, Igor Zbitnoff and David Kroll showed their support with cash donations. When I asked them on the eve of the conference if they would bring tea or apples or bananas, Lorraine Cramer, Josh Staiger and Dave Johnson readily agreed. Rob Zelt ferried the cinnamon rolls from Weaver Street Market. (We paid Saladelia Cafe to provide the sandwiches and salads for lunch, but they do deserve a shoutout for punctually delivering quality food.)